What We Played #89: 007 Bloodstone, Move Fitness and Retro City Rampage

The one set in the Shivering Isles.

Greg Aldridge, 4 years ago, 19 comments.

If you’ve ever been to the British Isles you’ll know how much we Brits love to talk about the weather. We like it even more if we can talk about the “extreme” weather we’re experiencing. But if you live anywhere that has real extreme weather you’ll probably just laugh at us.

After a week of the news telling us how cold it is I’ve just about had enough. I wish they’d get over the fact it gets a bit chilly in winter. It’s not properly cold. The -41°C they had in Minnesota this week, that’s proper cold. Anyway, rant over, time to get down to business.

Tuffcub is busy questing to reduce his huge pile of unplayed or unfinished games. First up this week was 007 Bloodstone. Having played all the way through it he say “the drivey bits were fab, the shooty bits got a bit boring”.

Metal Gear Solid 2 on his PS Vita has got “veh annoying” as he’s managed to get stuck trying to locate some explosives. Apparently not annoying enough though as he’s picked up Batman Arkham City with a view to finishing it. If you’ve been reading WWP regularly you’ll know how much he loves that game.

Needing more shooty stuff having completed Vanquish, which he liked “an awful lot”, he went bargain bin dipping and picked up RAGE for a fiver. Initial impressions, “I see that despite a couple of patches the pop in textures are still very annoying”. So he’s not short of annoyances this week.

A few more hours into Final Fantasy XIII and Jim is finding that it “is really starting to grow on me”. While initially overwhelming he’s finding that as the pieces come together that “there’s a tight albeit less taxing JRPG experience to be had”. He’s found the best approach is to know when to take a break from it instead of just hammering through.

Ironically you need a gym-sized space to play Move Fitness. At least a PS3 is cheaper than a treadmill, though much harder to exercise your dog on. They just slide straight off the shiny original PS3s.

In those breaks he’s dusted off his PS Move and is now waving his glowing balls around while playing Sports Champions 2 and Move Fitness which he says “have both been surprisingly good”. He praises the accuracy but is finding that Move Fitness “is somewhat hampered in that it requires a big play area to work well”.

Peter’s been partaking in demos this week. Not the union-led ones that involve standing on a picket line warming your hands over a flaming barrel. More action-oriented than its predecessors Dead Space 3 “seemed like a lot of fun”:

The co-op was a nice addition and the way it altered things from the single-player run through was quite clever, although possibly not enough to warrant two playthroughs.

The Metal Gear Rising demo was significantly less enjoyed. The “awkward and inconvenient” controls didn’t win him over to a style of game he’s not a huge fan of to begin with. “It just seems like another over-the-top Platinum hack-and-slash that’s plundered Kojipro’s wardrobe.”

Josh must be snowed in somewhere trying to stave off boredom as he’s played lots and provided an epic account of his gaming that’s probably longer than some WWP posts have been. So here’s some pure unedited Josh:

I’ve been good this week and actually played stuff! I finally finished up my run-through of GTAIV, nabbing the “Liberty City Minute” trophy for completing the game in a limited amount of time, and then got through the main story path of The Lost and Damned DLC too! Now I’m on to the Ballad of Gay Tony content.

I actually thought I’d like TLAD the least owing to its kind of moody nature, plus the constant presence of motorbikes – which handled like crippled elephants in the main game – but it was actually fantastic. Really great atmosphere and characters, and just plays really well, with none of the crappy filler missions in the original game. The last couple of missions in particular were highlights.

Elsewhere, I’ve been playing through the New Game Plus mode in Plants vs Zombies Vita, and jumping in and out of Jet Set Radio and Retro City Rampage on that same platform. I have no particular allegiance to Jet Set Radio, having never played it before, but I’m enjoying it in small chunks of playtime (the controls and camera are janky, but gotta love those Sega Blue Skies ™!).

Retro City Rampage is similar – far from perfect (as I expected from reviews), but I’m having a blast with it, and find myself churning through just to get to get to the next pop culture reference. I’m reasonably sure I was working with Solid Snake on a mission given by Doc Brown from Back to the Future earlier.

Oh, and the indie-themed mini-games in the arcade are great – I suck at the Epic Meal Time game, but I’m loving the retro de-makes of Super Meat Boy and Bit.Trip Runner. In fact, I’ve probably spent more time playing those than the main game.

I also found some time to sit down with a couple of matches of StarCraft 2 this week, and find it just as enjoyable as ever. I still suck, but it’s fun, especially in 2v2, when I can concentrate on my aerial fleet while my unlucky companion defends us both! If you want to be that unlucky companion, feel free to add me on Battle.net, as I don’t have all that many SC2-owning friends.

I also dabbled a bit with the Heart of the Swarm beta, but the combination of only small changes to the Protoss (my race of choice) and the significantly lower numbers of players meant it wasn’t long before I headed back to Wings of Liberty.

Finally, although it’s not really playing, I had great fun laughing at my girlfriend’s sweary attempts to make her way through Uncharted 2 this week, fighting more with Drake’s desire to roll of a cliff rather than take cover, than with the game’s actual enemies.

That just leaves Aran to wrap things up this week. He’s still playing his way through Mass Effect but has still to be grabbed by it. I can’t help but wonder if maybe the first game isn’t as strong if you’ve played both sequels?

He’s finally finished Metro 2033 and highly recommends it. The game’s “fantastic atmosphere” was “creepy in the right places purely because of great level and sound design”. If nothing else it has acted as a great advert for Metro Last Light which is now firmly on Aran’s radar.

Lastly, he’s played “a mental game with the sole objective of hunting people down and dispatching them”. That’s right, he’s discovered Crackdown. He’s been enjoying playing a game “where you can just go a bit crazy”, although he does think a Robocop or Judge Dredd skin for your character would fit in perfectly.

What are those of you not huddled around your Xbox 360s fan heaters trying to stave of frostbite in your fingers playing?

Played resistance burning skies personally I did not see what the fuss & all the negativity around this game was. I just need online pass to get my platinum so I will wait till Sony give it free on plus lol also been playing sumioni demon arts on the vita lovely mini game that is.

I managed to get my ps to play a blu ray game so play LA noir for the first time, not bad so far not bad. Should have my ps3 fixed soon

Dungeon Siege III. Very enjoyable in co-op and more than a little reminiscent of Baldur’s Gate.

I also tried the demos this week finding DS3 much better than I expected, MGS:R a confusing mess of extreme violence and awkward controls that quickly got boring, The Cave however, was simply wonderful.

It is laughable how unprepared we are – “UK in Chaos”!! Not really, it’s just a bit of snow. If you’re not comfortable driving, don’t go out and get in my way! ;)

I’ve played DiRT Showdown in the TSA Meet on Tuesday, and I’m hosting a Meet tonight too which I’m looking forward to. I’ve played some more of my Rage Ultra Nightmare playthrough and some Black Ops 2 Nazi Zombies too.

On Vita I 100%’ed Uncharted Fight for Fortune’s main campaign and Uncharted 2 DLC, just gotta do the Uncharted 3 DLC now. I also did a couple of races on NFS Most Wanted.

I also tried the Dead Space 3 demo, which I have mixed feelings about. Strangly, I though the visuals were worse than on 1 and 2….might we have an XBox port since they have early demo exclusivity and the Kinect stuff, or am I being cynical? I hate the new menus although they are kind of necessary due to the weapon creating – although I just feel the menus and their visuals are just a bit cheesey looking (such as the Perks within the circuit modifying section). But I’m grateful that there is weapon creating (which is awesome), as it brings something new to do rather then repeating the Node upgrading system for a third time. I also thought the new necromorphs looked a bit shite, but I like the environments and setting so far. For every small negative there seems to be something positive too, looking forward to playing the full game though.

This week has mostly been about DmC. Finished my first playthrough last night and I can honestly say I enjoyed every second of my 10 hour playthrough. The storyline was great and the combat absolutely superb. Can’t imagine I will hold onto it as I didn’t have the urge to start a fresh run through but a solid game overall and well worth checking out.

Other than that I tried out the MGR:R and Dead Space 3 demos. Didn’t enjoy either at first, with MGR feeling a bit flat in comparison to DmC and Dead Space 3 simply being dreadful. I replayed both demos a couple of times and MGR has really grown on me since, resulting in my chucking a pre-order down for the full game. As for Dead Space, if I ever meet the person(s) responsible for taking such a great series and turning it into nothing more than a throw-away TPS I will probably slap them with my dueling glove.

Oh I also watched the Nintendo Direct video. Seriously, how good was that?!

Well I was playing the rather excellent Hitman: Absolution. But then my local Blockbuster had a closing down sale, so I went ‘vulturing’ and picked up Farcry 3 and Borderlands 2 for £30!! Needless to say since Farcry hit the disc tray the other two haven’t had a look in.

My missus quite likes watching farcry so the other night I handed her the controller, within less than 2 mins she’d been attacked by a pack of dogs, set herself on fire and handed the controller back!

‘Is that it? Am I dead!? ‘
‘Yup, have another go if you like’
‘I’d rather watch…’
:D

More Sacred 2 for me this week, this time I played through the Dark campaign and polished off a few other random trophies.
I’ve also been playing EDF on the Vita in small 4 or 5 level bursts, I’m currently about 2/3rds of the way through the campaign on easy.
Other than that just the usual plethora of meets … Showdown, THPS, DOA 5.

Blasting through any Plus games whilst waiting for ‘Bioshock: Infinite’ although I’m not really enjoying Vanquish that much.
Yesterday I watched the Blu-ray of ‘Serenity’, the film adaptation of ‘Firefly’. It was great. Gonna watch the Watchmen later in the week.

I just had a look, it seems to be Home Arcade related. At the moment it’s just one game (Scribble Shooter), but I’m assuming they’ll be adding more. Basically, if you buy the game on Vita you get the same game as an arcade cabinet in Home on PS3, or if you buy the cabinet in Home you get the Vita game.

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